Camden official won’t face charges in impersonation case

CAMDEN, Maine — No charges will be filed against Camden’s economic development director following an investigation into accusations that he pretended in emails to be a state official.

Kennebec County District Attorney Maeghan Maloney said Thursday that a decision was made in June to close the case involving Brian Hodges after no evidence was found to warrant any charges.

Hodges refused to comment Friday, but his attorney, Leonard Sharon said, that no one from the district attorney’s office had yet informed his client that the investigation had ended. Sharon said Hodges found out when the Bangor Daily News contacted him Friday.

Sharon added that Hodges had cooperated fully with investigators and that both he and his client had been confident no charges would result.

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Maloney didn’t become district attorney of Kennebec and Somerset counties until Jan. 1, when she replaced acting district attorney Alan Kelley. Previous attempts by the BDN to determine the outcome of the Hodges case had been unsuccessful with the district attorney’s office saying that its policy was to not comment on cases unless charges were brought.

When contacted this week, Maloney reviewed the records and found that the former assistant district attorney who handled the case had not found evidence to warrant any charges and a decision had been reached in June.

The case became public in January 2012 when search warrant affidavits were filed in Rockland District Court allowing the Maine State Police’s computer crimes task force to seize the computer used by Hodges at the Camden town office and his computer at his West Gardiner home. The searches had been executed the month before the affidavits were filed.

Hodges was being investigated for allegedly impersonating a public servant, a Class E crime, after a complaint was filed with state police by Maine Community Development and Economic Development Director George Gervais. Gervais had complained that someone was sending out emails to state employees, purporting to come from Deputy Commissioner Deb Neuman.

Neuman told investigators that the emails “caused some problems that had to be explained to Governor Paul LePage,” according to a state police affidavit filed in support of the search warrants. The affidavit stated that the emails originated from an account linked to a computer at the Camden Town Office and at Hodges’ home.

Hodges, who was hired for the Camden job in March 2011, had previously been deputy commissioner in the state economic development department.